MALAWI

168

Number of completed entrepreneurs

186

Total number of jobs

8,372

Number of people affected

60

Number of clients in progress

From 2010 to 1 April 2016

Welcome to Grow Movement Malawi, the warm heart of Africa, where GROW first started working in November 2012. The Malawi Government plans to transform the country from being a predominantly importing and consuming to a manufacturing and exporting economy with a key theme of 'Sustainable Economic Growth' to drive this. GROW supports this strategy through its provision of virtual consultancy services to business women with its partner organisation the 'National Association of Business Women' (NABW). NABW has a purpose to uplift the socio-economic status of women in Malawi through the provision of marketing information, microfinance, and as acting as a mouth piece for business women to government and enterprise development institutions.

Since starting a trial with just 10 clients in 2012, GROW operations have expanded from Blantyre to Lilongwe offering our services to over 150 clients per year. The GROW Malawi team sit alongside NABW in both locations, attending networking and training sessions together. GROW entrepreneurs are typically women, but over time husbands and male family members of existing clients have sort GROW services. In early 2014 GROW placed laptops in a rural community within the Ntcheu district enabling rural clients to join the GROW programme for the first time. In the future GROW Malawi hopes to be able to offer its services to more rural entrepreneurs. In 2015 GROW secured funding from the Scottish Government Small Grants Programme to expand to Mzuzu on the Tanzanian border where we have started to offer ourservices using translators.

In February 2016 Grow Movement started a partnership with M Hub supporting young tech entrepreneurs in Lilongwe.

Our female clients are involved in tailoring, clothes shops, hair salons, nursery schools, piggeries, chicken farms and retail outlets. Many women will travel to Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, South Africa and Ghana to purchase fabrics, household items and electrical goods for sale in their business, as well as having a full or part time job and an extended family to look after. Over time more the husbands, friends and brothers of our female clients have joined the GROW programme as they too see the benefits of virtual consultancy. The GROw Malawi team work hard to provide email and Skpye training to all GROW clients.